gabriella gershenson

San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2007

The title "The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, From Samurai to Supermarket" creates an expectation of a dry historical text, with an implication from the subtitle of a chronology of the popular raw fish meal. In reality, "The Zen of Fish" is an amicably told tale that takes a quirky, humanistic and mostly non-linear approach to the story of sushi.

Author Trevor Corson, whose past works include "The Secret Life of Lobsters," finds himself in familiar territory as he chronicles the 3-month training program at the California Sushi Academy in Hermosa Beach, in Los Angeles County. He starts the story by following 20-year-old Kate Murray, a flailing student whom Corson selects as the underdog (a questionable move: Kate's persistent ineptitude -- for instance, she never learns how to properly use her knife -- and squeamishness when it comes to handling fish wore this reader's patience thin. Other students, such as the quiet, former Japanese pop star Takumi, or the drill-sergeant instructor, Zoran, are infinitely more interesting -- you can see all the real people in the book on thezenoffish.com, a companion Web site that lends the books a whiff of reality television).

Corson takes a fly-on-the-wall approach, carefully documenting the daily exchanges as students are taught to gut, clean, slice, roll and present all manner of aquatic life into customer-ready creations. He details his meticulous reportorial approach at the outset of the book: "All descriptions rely on extensive field reporting and nothing has been invented or fictionalized ... Speech in single quotation marks (' ') represents speech that was not directly witnessed by the author but was described to the author as having occurred," and so on. This deliberate, labor-intensive technique creates an immediate (and lasting) respect for the author's narrative purity. Even an offhand impression as simple as this one -- "Kate Murray's alarm clock went off at 5:30 a.m. She forced her eyes open" -- was the product of focused interviews and note-taking. Commendable as it is, Corson's execution of this reportorial ideal at times lends a stilted air to the proceedings: "After class, Kate drove to McDonald's, as she'd been doing every day after class. She bought a Big Mac. She drove home. She sat on the one chair in her lonely little house in Torrance, surrounded by her unpacked boxes. She stared at the floor and slowly chewed her Big Mac."

The author uses select points in the "real time" of the sushi academy as opportunities to jump into the scholarly discourse -- pieces of sushi sociology, anthropology, history and marine biology -- that gives the book its name. The class' first lesson on making rolls, for instance, leads to a chapter on seaweed that includes several revelations -- how a British scientist's discovery changed nori from a rare treat to a thriving industry; that the point of the inside-out roll, an American invention, was to conceal the black seaweed from finicky Stateside eaters. This formula is repeated with ease throughout the book without seeming contrived, whether Corson is launching from Kate's struggles in class to the inherent sexism in the sushi trade, or creating a segue from a Hollywood catering job to tuna's traditional status in Japan as a low-class fish.

Once he hits his stride, Corson's work mimics an omakase meal (which signals to the chef that you are in his or her hands), guiding the reader on a mostly enjoyable, sometime delightful journey through sushi land. He explains the expected -- albeit fascinating -- tidbits, for instance, what the origins of sushi are (ironically, it started off as a technique to preserve raw fish) and the real contents of the paste that we all call wasabi (it's mostly mustard and horseradish -- real wasabi root is expensive and incredibly rare). But he also throws in factoids that make you gasp or giggle. Take the role of the mackerel in English slang:

"Mackerel have a reputation the world over for their ostentatious shine. In England, calling a man a 'mackerel' meant he was a dandy; in France, it meant he was a pimp. It is from the latter usage that we get the term 'mack daddy.' "

Corson also possesses a touch of the poetic, visible in beautiful sentiments such as this one: "When a perfect nigiri crumbles apart on the tongue, the grains of rice mingle instantly with the fish, combining tastes and textures. The sensation some diners feel is gratitude because the chef has calibrated the sushi so perfectly that they hardly have to chew."

The reader seeking porn-style food writing should look elsewhere. Corson has a penchant for describing foods in scientific terms (he effusively thanks Harold McGee, the food science genius, in his acknowledgements), and his tendencies to describe flavors from the chemistry perspective might not cut it for vicarious thrills. See this flavor commentary: "While most flatfish muscle lacks a high concentration of flavor elements, it does contain a variety of interesting amino acids."

When it comes to the fish, Corson focuses largely on what their lives were like before they became menu items. The fascinating existence of the aquatic creatures we consume at the sushi bar put the story lines of the humans in "The Zen of Fish" to shame. Corson describes why flatfish have all of their features crowded onto one side of their face, the sex-changing tendencies of shrimp, who start their lives as male and end them as females, the treacherous life's journey of the eel, and the unexpected beauty of the squid. So much of gastro journalism focuses on consumption. This chronicle reveres the creatures destined for dinner as much as it does the humans who prepare them.